Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T08:41:05.053Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Philosophy: Scientific or Humanistic?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2015

John Kekes
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Are or should the assumptions, methods, and aims of philosophy be scientific or humanistic? I take Quine to represent the view that if philosophy is done as it should be, it is scientific. A contrary view is that philosophy rightly pursued is humanistic. I consider Williams' defense of it. My aim in this paper is to show that each view is partly right and partly wrong and to propose an alternative that includes what I take to be right and excludes what I take to be wrong in both views.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 90 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 241 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Magee, Bryan, ‘The Ideas of Quine’ in Follesdal, D. & Quine, D.B., eds. Quine in Dialogue (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978/2008), 5–6.Google Scholar

2 Edmister, Bradley & O'Shea, Michael, ‘W.V. Quine: Perspectives on Logic, Science, and Philosophy’ in Quine in Dialogue, op. cit. (1994/2008)Google Scholar, 45.

3 Brill, Olaf, ‘There is Always a Further Step’ in Quine in Dialogue, op. cit. (1998/2008)Google Scholar, 97.

4 Quine, W.V., ‘On the Nature of Moral Values’ in Theories and Things, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978/1981)Google Scholar, 63.

5 Ibid. 66.

6 Quine, W.V., ‘What I believe’ in Quine in Dialogue, op. cit. (1984/2008), 310–311.Google Scholar

7 Nagel, Thomas, ‘Subjective and Objective,’ in Mortal Questions, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, The View from Nowhere, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, The Last Word, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

8 The fullest account of Williams' genealogical approach is in Truth & Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar. References in the text are to the pages of this volume. His explicit defense of humanistic philosophy is in ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline’ in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, ed. Moore, A.W., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000/2006), 180–199.Google Scholar

9 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, (New York: Basic Books, 1974).Google Scholar

10 Craig, Edward, The Mind of God and the Works of Man, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

11 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, G.E.M., (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968)Google Scholar, 226.

12 Ibid. 85.

13 Strawson, P.F.'s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ in Freedom and Resentment, (London: Methuen, 1962/1974)Google Scholar, 23.

14 Nagel, Thomas, The Last Word, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, 21.

15 Williams, ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline’, 195.